Blog # 5

            When people talk about slaves the immediately think about the United States and its history with the African Slave Trade.  Chapter 15 starts off with a woman talking about “I have come full circle back to my destiny: from Africa to America and back to Africa” (Strayer, 433).  This is a common theme when you ask just about anyone about slavery they immediately link it to the United States.  But sadly this is only a small portion of what actually happened during the peak years of the Slave Trade. 

People (and by people I mean the ancestors of African Slaves) want to put a big target on the US as the leading contributor for slavery just because even today our race relations have a long way to go before we see complete tolerance and forgiveness.  When reading this chapter I found out that the United States acquired the least amount of slaves during the 18^th Century.  It was actually the Caribbean and Brazil that really contributed to the mass use of slaves from Africa.  But no one ever talks about slavery in these two countries.  Why is that?

Maybe people don’t talk about these two other countries as leaders in the Slave Trade and key contributors to the atrocities that happened to this group of people because they had better initial race relations with their incoming workers.  Even though their slaves had to endure much harsher working conditions, so much so that their life span was only an average of 7 years once they were acquired.  Maybe a key difference is because at times interracial marriage was not forbidden between slaves and the Spanish and Portuguese people that were occupying these countries at the time.  While they still used them as laborers they still in some ways viewed them as human and that is really a key element in why people can so easily forget and forgive the number of slaves that actually were brought to these lands.

In the United States this was not the case.  Even though the number of slaves was significantly less than that of the Caribbean and Brazil, the early settlers and plantations owners did not view the slaves as human.  While they may have had it much easier in terms of labor, and living conditions, they were traded and treated as disposable.  Interracial marriage was not allowed, and while relationships occurred between slave and owner it was more on the basis of rape, not of mutual adoration and respect.  Maybe this is why people remember the American Slave Trade so vividly today and not the other countries that were as guilty in these crimes against humanity.

 The Caribbean and Brazil really had it right because they don’t have the residual issues that we still face today in the United States.  Even today over 50 years after equality and integration occurred there are still tensions between whites and blacks.  This is because after the slave trade ended the White Settlers still didn’t give former slaves or ancestors of slave’s basic human rights.  They still treated them as less than human, as if they were animals.  It is a shame that we couldn’t be more like the Caribbean and Brazil because they were able to move forward and accept the former slaves as equals, and most importantly as human. 

So numbers really mean nothing in respect to how you treat one another.  Everyone has the right to be treated as Human, almost everything else can be forgiven or at least puts you in a position to be able to move forward, but taking away a person’s right to be treated as Human is unforgivable and we see the results of that today.